Tag Archives: peanut sauce

This week I collected the last bits of broccoli from my fall plants and then pulled them out of the ground for compost. It wasn’t enough for a major broccoli project (a broject?), but combined with some other ingredients I had on hand, plus some particularly good garden bounty, they wound up in a delightful lunch today.

I’ve had a spectacular cilantro crop this spring—a result of my late summer planting. I’ve had harvest after harvest this month (and if anyone has any ideas for preserving cilantro, let’s hear it!). Also have been pulling quite a few carrots lately.

There are some ingredients I just like to have around because they keep well and are easily combined with other things. These include some that I used today:

Pasta (in this case, udon noodles)

Extra-firm tofu

Raw cashews

Onions

Sesame oil

Peanut butter (in the sauce)

Limes

So here’s what I ended up doing today. I sliced a half an onion, the broccoli, a carrot, and a cake of tofu. I also chopped up a massive quantity of cilantro.

I scrounged in the fridge until I found the leftover spicy peanut sauce I had made last week for another dish (this sauce was so easy and delicious and versatile that it wound up on a grilled pork chop a few days ago, too. I substituted chives for the scallions called for here because I have tons of chives growing right now).

While the udon noodles cooked for about eight minutes, I heated some sesame oil in my wok on very high heat and stir-fried the tofu until golden brown.

Gradually I added in the other veggies, starting with the onions, then the carrots, then the broccoli, then finally the cashews. I stir fried everything until just cooked through. Then I poured in the peanut sauce (it was just enough!).

That’s when things got crazy.

Instead of draining the pasta and just topping it with the vegetables in a bowl, I decided to stop the pasta al dente, drain but reserve about 1/4 cup of the liquid, and then mix the pasta into the veggies and sauce in the wok, along with the reserved pasta liquid. Everything simmered and sizzled for about 45 seconds, then I turned off the heat, threw in the cilantro, squeezed 1/4 of a lime on top of everything, and pronounced it done.